I’ve read all of A.J. Jacobs’ “stunt” memoirs. The Year of Living Biblically was my favourite by far, but his first, The Know-It-All is pretty damn good, too*. My Life As A Guinea Pig is fine – it’s a collection of articles written for Esquire following the Jacobs’ theme of experimenting on himself.

Drop Dead Healthy is just as good as Biblically. I spent the entire week I was reading this book reading quotes out loud to everyone around me, and making notes to improve my own healthiness.

It’s not your average self-help diet and exercise book, there isn’t one simple program that he hawks. It’s a fairly broad overview of all that healthy living has to offer, told with minimal judgement (a tone I call “respectful skepticism”) – a lot like MaryRoach. It’s not surprising that I’m always reading endorsement quotes from one on the jacket flaps of the other. There are the expected chapters on exercise and diet (encompassing everything from mindful eating, caveman living, and the veggie smoothie diet), but, as usual, Jacobs goes several steps further; you’ll also find chapters on ear health, back health, hand health, and more.

Some standout chapters are those on sleep (hilarious and, for this insomniac, so so relevant), and the aforementioned back (utterly, surprisingly, hilarious). This is that wonderful type of book that will cause you to accidentally learn things while entertaining you effortlessly. As a wannabee musician and athlete, the information on finger fitness was especially intriguing. The information on Retina A/tretinoin was very nice to know. I’m totally going to do HIIT for *my* mini-marathon. And he shared some truly terrifying information about sugar that the willfully ignorant like myself may have missed.

So four-and-a-half stars for you, A.J., and I’m looking forward to reading the next one.

*After reading them yet another quote from the book, my parents asked if I remembered anything from The Know-It-All, and I got to show off all proudly my remembrance of aposiopesis and apotropeic names, so there. Although I do remember purposefully trying to memorize those ones back when I was reading it, for the sole purpose of retaining *some* information, so…

Cannonball Read: 40/52

(Cannonball Read V: 1/36)

Favourite quotes:

“…As I learned in my year of living biblically, only by exploring the limits can you find the perfect middle ground.”

“If you could lock 10 thousand people in identical rooms for eighty years and feed half of them nothing but vegan food and feed the other half nothing but steak and eggs, and keep everything else the same, you could have some real data. But unless a Bond villain decides to pursue a doctorate in nutrition, that’s not going to happen.”